Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has made it his mission to overhaul the U.S. education system. In March, he ordered the dismantling of the Department of Education. In a bid to control universities, his administration has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal university funding. As of April 5, at least 60 universities were under investigation for antisemitism, according to the Guardian, and many have suffered federal funding cuts. The Trump administration claims that many of these cuts are in response to concerns over antisemitism on campuses. Still, a great deal of the administration’s demands overstep due process and affect wider university functions that are unrelated to antisemitism investigations. Additionally, the administration has revoked hundreds of student visas and arrested students “without warning or recourse for appeals,” according to the BBC. The administration has detained visa and green card holders for deportation due to their campus activism.

The administration’s actions against universities have disturbed educators, advocates, scientists, and analysts nationwide. The American Association of University Professors has called it a “political infringement on academic freedom,” and PEN America condemned the dismantling of the Department of Education in a March statement: “This is not about returning education to the state because 90% of funding for schools comes from the state and local level. This is about limiting access to education and dismantling our nation’s core commitment to education and the freedom to learn as the bedrock of our democracy.” Even Jerrold Nadler, U.S. representative and a self-proclaimed Zionist, has criticized the Trump administration’s crackdown on Universities. “If he were serious about antisemitism, Trump would be bringing cases in front of the Office of Civil Rights rather than destroying it,” Nadler said in an interview with the Guardian. “You can be anti-Israel and not antisemitic.”

As the administration has continued to target more and more universities, the Associated Press has reported on each new development. In March, the AP reported that the Trump administration suspended $175 million in funding for the University of Pennsylvania over a transgender athlete who last competed for UPenn in 2022. The Trump administration has made implementing transphobic policies a top priority. Since day one of his presidency, Trump issued an executive order aimed at combating “gender ideology extremism,” which erased a slew of transgender rights. According to the Associated Press, Trump has “pledged to exclude transgender students from Title IX protections.” As of April, several other research universities are facing massive funding cuts. Brown faces 510 million in contract and grant cuts, Northwestern 790 million, and Cornell 1 billion. According to a March 28 AP article, “for most of the schools, around 10% to 13% of their revenue came from federal contracts or research funding.” However, some research universities rely on federal money for up to 50% of their budget. Some universities have reduced their incoming class sizes in response to federal budget cuts.

Columbia was the first university to cave into the administration’s threats. On March 21, after being hit by 400 million in federal funding cuts, Columbia ceded to the administration’s demands. According to a March 21 memo, Columbia has agreed to “clarify” demonstration rules and disciplinary policies, hire 36 new special officers (all of whom have the power to make arrests), and place Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Departments under review by a newly appointed Senior Vice Provost. In the memo, Columbia stated, “Columbia’s President has adopted a position of institutional neutrality. The Provost’s Office is working with a faculty committee to establish an institution-wide policy implementing this stance.” The university will also “appoint new faculty members with joint positions in the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the departments of Economics, Political Science, and School for International and Public Affairs.”

The 400 million in lost funding has hit Columbia’s labs and medical centers hard, where essential research projects on cancer, infectious diseases, and more are now in limbo. Researchers already hit with NIH funding cuts and anti-DEI censorship are now facing yet another massive obstacle. Many of Columbia’s researchers have expressed dismay over these budget cuts. “There’s simply no justifiable link for the federal government to put this kind of research in the line of fire for the goal of mitigating antisemitism at a different location,” Dr. Dani Dumitriu, a pediatric researcher at Columbia, said to the AP. University and civil rights groups nationwide have expressed concern over Columbia’s decision. “Columbia’s concessions today strike at core principles of academic freedom and self-governance in the higher education sector,” said PEN America’s program director for Campus Free Speech in a response statement. “While we recognize the pressure Columbia has been under to resolve this issue, capitulating to any of these highly intrusive demands sets a dangerous precedent for higher education at large.”

Harvard University recently fired the Center for Middle Eastern Studies director and associate director. According to a Harvard Crimson article published on April 1, the “Interim Harvard Dean of Social Science David M. Cutler ’87 dismissed the Center for Middle Eastern Studies’ faculty leaders last week because he felt their programming on Palestine was insufficiently balanced.” In a statement on the firings, Cutler referenced two CMES events as contributors to the decision: a panel titled “An Ongoing Threat: Israel’s War on Lebanon, Past and Present” and a panel titled “Attacks On Children In Gaza.” Harvard also recently suspended its research partnership with a university in the West Bank.

According to an April 4 article by the AP, “The Trump administration has issued a list of demands Harvard University must meet as a condition for receiving almost $9 billion in grants and contracts.” In a press release, the President of the Harvard campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors urged Harvard not to agree to the administration’s demands, stating, “If Harvard, the wealthiest university on the planet, accedes to these demands, the task force won’t go away — it will simply return with additional demands, just like a schoolyard bully.” 

On April 2, the Daily Princetonian reported on a recent interview Princeton President Eisgruber did with Bloomberg, where he stated that Princeton “would not make concessions” to the administration. “It requires a very firm commitment to principle and a willingness to do hard things,” Eisgruber said. “We have to be willing to say no to funding if it’s going to constrain our ability to pursue the truth.” He said that Princeton is currently thinking of ways to reallocate endowment funds and cut costs to keep the core of the university functioning. Since Eisgruber’s statement, Trump has cut funding for climate research at Princeton.

The Trump administration’s dismantling of the education system has exceeded funding cuts to specific universities. The NPR Sunday Story recently shared that U.S. public school teachers face alarming censorship as the government cracks down on DEI. In February, the Department of Education launched the “End DEI Portal,” where community members can report teachers and faculty for implementing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices.

On March 20, President Trump signed an executive order to eliminate the Department of Education “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law” to give the department’s functions to the states. PEN America condemned the order later that same day, stating that “dismantling the Department of Education is a further step in dismantling democracy and eviscerating the freedom to learn.” The Department of Education manages over a trillion dollars in student loan debt for more than 40 million borrowers. According to the AP, The Department of Education “plays an important regulatory role in services for students, ranging from those with disabilities to low-income and homeless kids.”

On April 11, an immigration judge ruled that Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil and a former Columbia student could be deported despite being a lawful permanent resident and not having been charged with a crime. Last month, Khalil was arrested for his pro-Palestinian activism. In a letter dictated from ICE Detention, Khalil said, “For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.” He hopes to be released in time to witness the birth of his first child.

In late March, Tufts PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested by ICE agents for writing an op-ed encouraging Tufts to divest from Israel. In a recent interview with CBS, Ozturk described her terror and confusion during the arrest, saying that she was “sure” the ICE agents, who surrounded her in plainclothes near her home, forced her into an unmarked vehicle and refused her a lawyer, were going to kill her. Since her arrest, she has remained in detention, where she has endured crowded cells and minimal access to food and medical care. Ozturk is originally from Turkey and was studying in the U.S. on a visa, which has now been revoked. 

The attempt to categorize all pro-Palestinian demonstrations as inherently antisemitic erases the real and horrific genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza. As of April 12, Israel has killed an estimated 1,563 people since it broke the ceasefire agreement last month, according to Aljazeera. On April 7, the heads of OCHA, UNICEF, UNOPS, UNRWA, WFP, and WHO released a statement urging the world to save Palestinians. “More than 2.1 million people are trapped, bombed, and starved again, while, at crossing points, food, medicine, fuel, and shelter supplies are piling up, and vital equipment is stuck,” they said. According to UNICEF, at least 15,000 children have been killed in Gaza in the last 18 months. Meanwhile, in the U.S., students protesting the genocide are demonized as radicals upsetting the status quo.

The Trump administration has proven that it has no interest in empathy, equity, or anti-discrimination efforts—quite the opposite. Since January, the Trump administration has dismantled DEI efforts across the country and enacted policies that endanger minorities. Now, Trump is exploiting American institutions’ bipartisan refusal to acknowledge Israel’s genocide to seize control over American universities and, by extension, American science and speech.

Requiring that schools base their curriculum on a balance of political ideologies rather than science, data, and evidence-based critical thought is dangerous and antithetical to the duty of educational institutions. In its press release, Harvard’s chapter of the AAUP highlighted the dangers of requiring universities to strive for “topical and ideological balance.” “If applied fairly beyond this case,” they wrote, “it would require centers in the natural sciences to host programs on climate change that also featured climate denialists; economists who teach about free markets to also feature Marxist counter-speakers; visiting Israeli state officials to be joined onstage by Palestinians; and those who teach the history of slavery to give equal airtime to critics and advocates of slaveholding.”

Empathy has become radical when it should be the bedrock of our society. Teachers are afraid to discuss equality in their classrooms, students are being arrested for their political views, and terms such as “women,” “community,” “climate science,” “equality,” “gender,” and “racism” are being purged from research projects and government sites, according to PEN America. If empathy is radical, then we must all be radicals. Universities must stand up for their students and stand firm in their commitment to protect academic freedom. Arrests and deportations based on free speech cannot be accepted as the norm. If left unchecked, the Trump administration’s attack on science, education, and free speech will endanger everyone in the U.S.